Author: Christopher Merle
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July 12 is the day of action, read more over at EFF.org who is dedicated to fighting for your online rights. There is absolutely no reason to create a two tier system for the internet for the haves and have nots. Back in the late 1990’s a lot fiberoptic cable was laid in this country and to this day most of it is not being used. The real problem is the last mile problem that is getting the high speed connection from the internet backbone into the home. Infrastructure is a shared resource we all benefit from.

The internet backbone is the 21st century of the interstate highway system. The highway system is a great example of a public-private partnership. We own our vehicles and our taxes pay for the roads that everyone can use. Now we have seen an increase in toll roads that are encroaching on that public road system. The internet backbone is mostly privately owned now, but in reality should be treated as a public utility just as the highway system is.

Net Neutrality like the highway system lets you access the internet regardless of whether you have a in expensive PC, a mobile device, or a top of the line gaming system. As a freelancer my work is dependent on the internet, and small business it the main job creator not big business. If I had to pay more to access the internet and my clients too they would have less incentive and not participate fully in our vibrant economy which would no longer be vibrant without our active participation.

It is also vital for free speech and is as much a First Amendment issue. The internet is now without it’s dangers and predators, but we with net neutrality active and tech savvy citizens can spread the word easier to help protect their families and communities.

We know that a little over a century ago, in 1908, a comet struck Siberia in the Tunguska Event and it was devastating for the region, but because it was so remote and so little population that few were affected. Explorers took several years before they could even visit the site. There was no crater, but trees for miles around was flattened by the blast. If something similar had happened, 13,000 years ago by an even larger comet striking the glaciers in North America there’d be very little evidence to show for it today.

And even more recently in 2013 a meteor exploded over a populated Siberian city, Chelyabinsk, but because it was so much smaller than Tunguska the damage was relatively minor, 1100 were injured and thousands of windows destroyed.

I’m writing about it as a reminder to dig a little deeper to see if the evidence supports the theory. Catastrophic events have shaped human evolution and history, so it is possible, but is is true?

As a side note: It really should be the Year 12017 HE (Holocene or Human Era)

We have two printers in our house, an old Brother laser printer and a newer HP color laser printer. The newer printer has built in wifi and we can print via wifi directly or through the home wifi network. I did have a Raspberry Pi print server set up and working with my old Pi (model B version 1) and could print via wifi on it. I recently purchased a Raspberry Pi Zero and wanted to set it up as a print server. Install the following packages:

sudo apt-get install cups

and then configure user pi

sudo usermod -a -G lpadmin pi

[Note– It is recommended that you change the default password of pi to something more secure or replace the pi user with another user name with a strong password as I did for better security]

However, it turns out they don’t work on the Raspberry Pi as it uses an ARM chip to run it’s flavor of Linux and not an i386 based Linux, so you’ll need to use HP’s HPIJS driver – PPDs for compatible PCL-5e-based non-HP laser printers

You can select your printer in this case the Brother HL-2140 and it will generate a PPD file, but it won’t on it’s own as you’ll need to install the follow packages.

sudo apt-get install hpijs-ppds printer-driver-hpijs

You’ll need to add the driver via the browser. Go to localhost:631 or whatever the IP address is on your network to access the CUPS web interface. Connect the printer via USB to the Pi. Speaking of USB, I recommend getting a Zero4U 4 port USB hub which piggybacks onto the Raspberry Pi Zero in this case v1.3. Make sure which Zero version you have to get the right hub.

I also purchased a case, a wifi dongle, and a mini-HDMI to HDMI cable. I had a USB keyboard, USB mouse, and monitor with HDMI to connect to the Pi Zero Once you have the Pi Zero configured and connected with a wifi dongle and the IP address you’ve assigned it.

My next step is to get a short USB cable and a way to secure the print server to the printer, probably a velcro strip or something.

How much did it cost? The Zero costs $5, but I needed a power supply ($8), wifi dongle ($12), and SD Card ($10). I paid about $18USD for the Zero4U USB hub, plastic case and shipping from the Czech Republic. I’m not counting the other accessories I bought (mini-HDMI to HDMI cable) or needed (USB cable), but just for the making the print server itself it cost about $53. I’m going to leave out the countless hours of frustration getting it to work because I couldn’t get CUPS to work on the Zero to print. It would talk the printer. I could see it try to do something but nothing would happen. It wasn’t until I got the hpijs packages installed that I was able to get it to print. I’d set up CUPS before on laptops. When I started this project wireless print servers were a little more expensive, but I just found one on Amazon for $40. So I didn’t save any money, and I wasted a lot of time getting it to work. So if you just need a wireless print server for an old laser printer, then just buy one, but if you are into Raspberry Pis then this is what I did.

The time has come for me to move away from WordPress. I’ve been saying that for a while. I realized that I could migrate to Wagtail which is a CMS that sits on top of Django, but it requires some assembly. However, I can migrate to Plone much faster, and that is what I intend to do.

I will continue to support my existing WordPress clients and won’t push them to migrate to Plone. One or two might benefit, but WordPress is a good platform and is well supported. Why should they have to pay for a site twice? I worked with Plone extensively in the past, but not recently. I am looking at it again and it has improved dramatically and is no longer just for enterprise level websites. It can fill some of the niche that WordPress does.

I’m going to give myself 30 days from today to migrate my site to Plone. I still want to work with Wagtail, but mostly I want to work more with Python. It’s my favorite computer language. PHP not so much which is what WordPress is written in. The WordPress community is large, active, and makes up for the shortcomings of the language. The developers of the language have continued to make it more robust and secure, but that is not where my interests lie.

You have to go with what works for you. Python is easier to maintain and easier for me to figure out what the code of some project is doing if I look at it.

I’m testing MailPoet for a client. Normally I use a development site, but I needed a site with content to try it out. My client had been using Subscribe2 and it works pretty good, but MailPoet seems to have a few more features that they desire.

MailPoet and Subscribe2 allow you to send emails of new posts either singly or in digest form to subscribers to your website.

The pictures I put in the post are arbitrary. This and the Featured image are from the Country Music Hall of Fame.